Lordran 2818
by theseeker64
Summary: In the far future of Lordran, the city of Anor Londo has grown plagued with crime and drug abuse. Now, the former Berenike Knight, Black Iron Tarkus, is tasked with penetrating the seedy underbelly of the 'City of Gods' and uprooting its most dangerous, cult-like, gang 'The Sun Worshippers' and the addictive, ubiquitous, drug they're pushing: "Sun". M for language, nudity, violence
1. Chapter 1

Rainwater pooled atop the marquee that crowned the brothel, and when it grew full, a release hatch opened to prevent a build-up and it trickled down over the marquee itself. Green and blue neon lights blaring vibrantly into the night were streaked with trails of rain that blurred and obscured the words written in their tubing beyond comprehension. The plaque cleared in seconds, though, the water pouring down to beat on the heads of the hollow and the damned, and then it was as if all was right in Anor Londo again, for the fog had lifted, and the holy words sat stark and clear once more: **Pussy Inside.**

_You're drifting again. _Tarkus pulled a shot of breath through his nose, injecting his head with cold, clear, air and lifting his own 'release hatch' on his mind. He drove fingers into the bridge of his nose and pinched, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth until everything came back into focus. It did, but slow—like wrestling your way out of a heavy blanket in the morning after you're legs have gotten all tangled up—and when he was free at last, he lifted his head back to the streets and stepped out of the shadow of the alley.

The hollows were on top of him at once. They shuffled through the streets in an endless brown stream, playing the melancholy song of dirty bare feet scuffling along rain-slicked stone. Their pupils were so dilated, their irises so red, it appeared as if they weren't seeing anything at all, only marching forth because if they stayed still too long, they'd decay and die like the hollow things they were.

_Junkies, _Tarkus thought, shouldering his way through the crowd.

Voices of protest from a chorus of hoarse throats:

"Hey man!"

"Fuck you!"

"Don't touch me!"

"Big bastard!"

"Who do you think you are!?"

"Fuck - _you!"_

Hollows: lost in the sea of their own inebriation until you dared bump into them and cast them out of their doped-up reverie. Then? Then they were hornets awoken from their nest, and if they thought they could sting you down, they would. They didn't think that about Tarkus, though. He knew that from experience. Tarkus was two inches shy of seven-feet tall, built like a moving fortress, and had thirty-two pounds of certain steel death strapped across his back. The hollows only jeered and bitched until they got a look at the big, lurching, figure pushing through them, and when his shadow fell over them, it shut them up quick.

The marquee lights flickered, and for a moment the entire street was a mad, raving, party of pulsing lights and doped-up hollows and all six-feet-ten-inches of Tarkus's billowing trench coat and ebony armor plating beneath stood as the only sober thing left in the world. The hollows lifted red eyes to the flashing marquee and smiled the inexorably serene smiles that accompanied a chemical burning small holes in the brain. Then whatever malfunctioning electric socket had started the flicker righted itself, the neons ran solid once more, and the crowd moved on with slight disappointment wrinkling their pallid brows.

Tarkus shouldered through the last of them, breaking free from the brown river to stand beneath the almighty glow of the marquee. Twin, cast-iron, doors loomed up over him, staring down upon him in cold, decisive, judgement. These were the last barriers between decency and filth, and beyond them: the brothel men called 'Izalith' awaited - named so because that's were souls went to be damned.

"Hey, Tarkus!" A reedy, nasally, voice on his right shoulder; akin to a mosquito's buzz. "Hey, motherfucker!"

He glanced down at the doorman, Rickert, swarming around his breastplate with an indignant finger cocked up towards his face. The man was short, thin, and looked easy to break.

"What do you think you're doing down here, Tarkus? You ain't got no authority down here no more! We heard all about you! You ain't no Berenike. Not no more. So piss off! Momma doesn't want no trouble in-"

The move was so practiced, so meticulous, it came as easy as pulling a breath. Tarkus reached back for the hilt of his sword, swung it around, and planted the tip in the ground between them, where it burrowed into the stone and left a blossom of splinters. Rickert looked down, up, down, up again. He scratched his chin. "Well… that is a good point." He stepped aside, gestured forth. "Carry on."

Tarkus crossed beneath the doors—the last barrier of decency—and entered the brothel.

A half-dozen different smokes greeted his lungs at once. He tasted their variance on his tongue: cigarettes, joints, incenses, and above all - fire. The 'fragrances' worked together to sting and burn his eyes, and he had to squint as he pushed through the short hall before the lobby. Sprawled before him at its end, a great, plush, palace of crimson carpets and crimson walls, and tacky-looking ornate mirrors with bronze sculptures of bare-chested valkyries with their hands squeezing at their tits and their heads thrown back in ecstasy. Tarkus glimpsed his reflection between two such pairs of lustful warriors, and thought: _I'm sorry, Sarah._

"Well look here."

He looked there.

The 'Spider Goddess', as they called her, was sauntering across the brothel towards him, the thick smokes lingering beside her like guards standing hallowed and sentinel over their Goddess. She was one of the few things left in the world that drew up to height with Tarkus himself, and as she crossed the gap between them, her pale hips swaying, her bare breasts bouncing, auburn hair snaking down from her head and framing a face that was both impossible to look at and impossible not to, her eyes came aglow; as if an inner flame had sparked upon seeing him.

_You're drifting again._

"Tarkus." Her voice was low, husky, and carried the amorous intimations of one who was prepared to fuck at a moment's notice. "It's been a long time."

"Yeah."

She walked right up to him, pressed her bare breasts up against his armor, and kissed his cheek. Her lips were warm and moist and soft, and they reminded him at once of… something he'd lost.

"What brings you all the way down here into 'Izalith'?"

"Business."

She frowned, and the slight distortion of her smooth brow was comforting; a reminder that she was, in fact, not some immortal goddess after all. "What kind of 'business'?"

"The serious kind."

Quelaag—that was her real name—bit at her lip and fixed him with a shrewd look. "Serious business, huh? …word on the street is they threw your ass outof the Berenikes, Tarkus. …that true?"

"True enough."

"Then whose order are you here on?"

"Berenikes."

"So they reinstated you?"

"In a way."

Quelaag, for a moment, looked to be on the verge of losing her temper. Her pretty face went all scrunched up and her teeth—clean and white and housing fangs at their flanks—barred. Then she held his eyes a moment and the fire in her expression quelled. She laughed. "As terse and blunt as ever, aren't you Tarkus?"

"Suppose so."

His response spurred her laughter on harder. "Well, I'm sure if you can still see out of those two, dark, marbles rolling around in your big head: if you're here to collect on our business, there ain't no business to collect _on_."

She gestured behind her and Tarkus looked. She was right. The brothel was almost entirely devoid of life. There was a squat, balding, man behind the bar counter, two raggedy-looking fellows perched on stools across him, and a long sprawl of plush carpeting and velvet and silk pillows and cushions that housed no asses. 'Izalith' was damned.

Quelaag, apparently satiated by his silence, went on. "So if you think we've got _money _for those crooked Berenike fucks up in-"

"I'm here about the 'Sun Worshippers'."

Quelaag's mouth gaped. Her eyes narrowed intently on his own. A moment of silence passed, then: "Well, no shit… why didn't you say so earlier you black, iron, idiot! Come in! Come in and sit down! Shit, Tarkus. If you're going after the 'Sun Worshippers', you and I are on the same side." She turned to guide him deeper into the brothel, but halted and spun back to add, "Do you have any leads?"

"Just one," Tarkus told her. "Your sister."


	2. Chapter 2

Wine-colored drapes split down the seam and parted like the legs of a demon, opening wide to welcome all comers. Tarkus followed the Spider Goddess up and in, and then they were out of the stale air that permeated the brothel lobby and into the sweet aroma of a smaller, more personable, room. It had four rosewood walls standing sentinel around an oblong strip of cushions, and on the cushions was the girl.

Quelaan was her name, but all the Daughters' names were so fucking similar, like the rest, she'd accrued a title. They called her the 'Fair Lady'.

She was sitting cross-legged atop a cushion, her eyes glossy but focused on her own finger held reverently up a few inches from the tip of her nose. Little droplets of flame were bubbling up from the skin atop the finger, and each time they did, the girl's lips quivered, as if she were trying to smile but forgotten how. She was dressed in tattered black rags that passed as a shirt and dress. The shirt was cut low, and across the pale flesh of her collarbone were the words '_It was a pleasure to burn' _inked in fancy, stylized, lettering. More ink dotted the length of her skinny arms and legs: words and pictures merging as one, sprawling, mural of nonsense. Her hair was unkempt and a pallid shade of blond, beneath which her nose, eyebrow, ears, and lip had all been speared with bulb-tipped metal. They shined and shimmered when her head moved and her fingertip's flame played against them.

Spider Goddess said: "Quelaan." And when the girl did not appear to hear her, marched up beside her and slapped the back of the girl's head. A splash of blond hair came in a tidal wave over her brow, and when she clawed it from her face, the expression she wore was one of only mild annoyance.

"What the fuck, sis?" Her speech was slurred, slow.

"Don't you have any manners, you rude little cunt? Look who's here to see you."

The Fair Lady looked. Her eyes focused and unfocused and focused again on Tarkus, but before long, she was wincing and rubbing at her temples.

"She's on it," Tarkus said.

"No shit she's on it," Quelaag answered. "Everyone in the fucking city is on it these days. Isn't that why you're _here_?"

Tarkus narrowed his eyes on the skinny, doped-up, thing knelt before him, who'd already returned her own attention to her magic fire-tipped finger. "Where did you get it?"

Her gaze floated up to him. A smirk played at the corner of her mouth. "Fuck you."

The Spider Goddess slapped her head again. "You mind your manners, sister, or I'll cut that little finger of yours clean off. Tell the man what he wants to know. This is for your benefit and for the family's."

"Family's?" Quelaan echoed, her lips curling back from her teeth in what was either a snarl or a smile.

"That's right, dumby. Do I have to take you by the ear and drag you out into the lobby? That shit you're all doped up on is turning all our stiff-dicked customers looking for fun into flaccid-cocked zombies who couldn't even _think _about getting it up long enough for your pretty mouth to earn a day's pay."

The Fair Lady looked back to Tarkus and he decided it was a snarl on her face; definitely a snarl. "Is that what this big fuck is here for?" She slid her tongue out to run it across her bottom lip.

Tarkus shifted a bit uncomfortably.

"I'm sorry, Tarkus," Quelaag said. "My idiot sister here doesn't hear too well these days. All that fucking dope is clogging up her ears. She's not a bad kid. Honest. But she's impressionable and a bit stupid, and the two traits work together to make her a pain-in-the-ass sometimes. You want me to hit her again, Tarkus? I can-"

He lifted a hand to halt the Spider Goddess, stepped forward, and knelt before the cushion. Even on one knee, he towered over the pale witch. He reached for her chin, the delicate and fragile cut of it in stark contrast against his dark, gauntlet-wrapped, war-mitt, and lifted till her eyes met his. They were the strangest, palest, shade of blue he'd ever seen, but the edges were rimmed red. "Sun-Worshippers," he said.

"…so?"

"They give you the 'Sun'?"

"No." She looked more defiant than afraid.

"Who did?"

"A guy."

"With a name?"

"Most guys got names, don't they?"

"What is it?"

"He didn't tell me."

"You didn't ask?"

She grinned that snarling grin of hers again. "If you think you ask your dealer his name, you ain't never bought."

Tarkus held her eyes. "The Berenikes are watching you."

"Fuck 'em."

_On that much, we agree. _"They wanted me to bring you in."

"Fuck you, too."

"I don't want to do that, though."

"Good."

"But I need something. Some information. I can't walk away empty-handed."

The witch flicked her eyes between his, back-and-forth, as if she were looking for the more sincere one. Then she lurched forward, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed the bridge of his nose. When her lips came away, she laughed and said, "Now you don't have to."

Tarkus pried her arms loose and stood, swiping at the spot she'd kissed and wondering what Sarah would think if she'd seen that. He faced the Spider Goddess. "They do want me to bring her in."

Quelaag rolled her eyes. "Fucking Berenikes… how did they convince you to come back, Tarkus? You're a decent man. And now you've got those crooked bastards flushing you down here into Lordran's cesspool to see what shit you can scrape off and bring to them? They don't understand how things are down here. They're too 'noble' up there in their castles and keeps to set foot on the streets, among the people, among the filth, among the hollow."

Tarkus stared.

The Spider Goddess sighed. "Well… if you have to take her, take her, but don't think this will win you any favors with Momma, and you make Gods-damned sure those bastards don't lay one of their filthy fingers on her, or they'll have an all-out war on their 'noble' fucking hands. You understand me, Tarkus?"

"I'd rather bring them the heads of the 'Sun Worshippers'." He looked to the Fair Lady. "If only I knew where to find them."

Quelaan rubbed her fingers together, and Tarkus figured she wanted to burn him. Then she lifted her head to him and said, "The guy… the guy who sold me 'Sun'… he hangs around down with Shiva's lot."

"The Forest Hunters?"

She nodded. "But you don't tell no one how you found that out. They'll cut me out. I can't be cut out. You don't understand. You can't just 'stop' doing it once you start. It'll rot your insides."

"'Sun'? 'Sun' rots your insides if you stop using it?"

"Rots 'em all up. Turns you hollow. _Really _hollow. Not like them idiots out in the streets."

Tarkus shared an apprehensive look with the Spider Goddess. She said: "Well, shit. That sounds like a problem."

"Forest Hunters," Tarkus began. "Shiva. They still roaming around the outskirts of the city? Darkroot Gardens?"

The Fair Lady nodded.

Tarkus returned it. He faced the Spider Goddess and said, "Don't let your sister go anywhere. I'll be back if nothing turns up."

"Sure, Tarkus. Sure."

He was turning to leave when she added, "How's your wife, by the way?"

He halted, turned on her, and whatever she must've seen in his expression made her gape and correct herself in an awful hurry. "Oh, shit. Right. Gods, I'm sorry Tarkus. I forgot. You forget things from time-to-time down here."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Yeah."

"You… you take care of yourself, alright?"

"Yeah."

He turned and slipped through the demon's legs again, pushed down the narrow hall, and made his way out of Izalith's main lobby as fast as he could. He didn't want to smell it anymore. It smelled like fire and death and he couldn't help but think of the last time he saw his wife.

Outside, the rains were coming down heavier, the hollows grew more cluttered and belligerent under their wet volley, and the dark street stretched on endlessly towards the horizon in a curving line. Tarkus headed down it at once, hoping he hadn't been away from the life long enough to put rust on his combat skills.

For amidst the Forest Hunters, he'd need them.


	3. Chapter 3

Anor Londo's streets were an amalgamation of filth, grime, and decay, a holy union between crime and decadence, and Tarkus was eager to move them from the path ahead to the path behind. He lurched down the middle of the street as fast as a man threatening the ceiling of seven feet could. The street's center was the most densely-packed footing you could find, doped-out hollows shuffling along shoulder-to-shoulder at the languid pace demanded by their drug-addled brains, but the path untrodden at the street's flanks passed by shadowed alleys and shadowed doorways and shadowed vestibules, and from shadows came death, and Tarkus preferred to move slow than to not move at all, so he resolved to shoving himself a path clear down the middle.

As he shoved on, ignoring a chorus of slurred jeers and indignant hisses, he watched twin streams of endless temptation pass on his flanks. Here, neon lights blared advertisement for alcohol and cigarettes; there, topless succubi wrapped bare legs around pillars and pole and gaped lustily at passers-by. A merchant huddled beneath a dripping awning at the street corner, peddling knives and daggers and everything in between that could scare a man into bleeding gold, or cut him into bleeding _blood_ if the gold was too valuable a resource. Weapons, drugs, and pussy: the fundamental ingredients for some good old-fashioned, red-blooded, violence.

Tarkus didn't want to be violent anymore, but violence was in a man's nature, and you could only be around it for so long before the your insensible self bludgeoned your sensible self to death with a stick and the inner beast crawled free. The temptation was everywhere, oozing out of the shadows and just waiting for its darkness to be reciprocated. It had been a long time since he'd heard the snap of a bone breaking or the dying gasp of a mortally-wounded opponent, or watched the light fade out of a pair of eyes as they stared into his, a nebulous swirl of thoughts flashing by in an instant that all sooner-or-later read the same thing: _This is it?_

It wasn't something he particularly missed. Not like he missed _her_, at least.

The dark trench that burrowed through the stone bellies at the end of the street halted in an abrupt line. The toes of Tarkus' boots found it, and he stood staring into the forest sprawled before him. It was a wild, unkempt, mane of browns and greens that chewed at the 'civilized' world's border, right up the buildings themselves, where creepers and vines reached clawed fingers up to cradle the plinths of flanking columns which marked the end of Anor Londo and the start of the Darkroot Garden.

Cold wind tunneled forth between a stand of oak sentinels and sent the tattered rags of a sleeping junkie lying at the borderline billowing and flapping. He groaned a meek protest, rolled on his side so the winds weren't scraping at his cheeks anymore, and curled up in a ball. An empty bottle rolled away from him, filling the deserted street with the haunting whisper of glass on stone. The glass rolled to Tarkus' boot and clinked to a halt at its side. He stepped on it, watched the way it shattered to bits, and wondered: _Is killing still that easy?_

Questions like those never answered themselves, though, and so Tarkus reached around for the familiar grip on his greatsword's hilt, yanked it up to his side, and headed into the forest; the massive sword teetering out before him like a plank jutting from a great, black, ship, held in perfect balance by more than three decades of practice. It's tip broke the sprawling ocean of green that was the forest's curtains, and Tarkus was out of the 'civilized' world and into Forest Hunter territory.

The forest was a maze of darkness, spotted here and there with moonlight shafting through a clearing in the canopy of leaves and branches overhead. Twigs crunched satisfyingly underfoot, but granted no favors where stealth was concerned. Intermittent gales of wind sent the less-stout trees atremble; shadows played and twisted in the slim doorways between their barks. Further he went and more harshly the wind followed, and the night began to come alive with the sound of movement and sniggering.

Tarkus reached for the slide-panel on his armor's shoulder mantle and pulled a knob aside. The mechanisms within his breastplate came alive with sound and from his collarbone rose a shield of ebony-plating to leap before his face. It curled inwards and hugged at the back of his head, granting a slim berth to the contours of his nose and jawline, and a moment later, the helmet's visor whirred and hummed until the night could no longer hide in shadows, for the world had been painted the vibrant shade of harlequin.

And in that pale green and yellow sea he saw them.

Hunters: crouched furtively in shadows all around him like feral predators stalking wounded prey. When the wind moved, so did they, bending their limbs at inhuman angles to shake and twist with the contours of trees and branches and leaves, and with every preternatural bend, they came in on him tighter, closing the cinch of their noose around the neck of his position. Their mouths were blasted back from their teeth in twisted delight. Their hands clutched at daggers; fingers rubbing at the hilts as if playing at a woman's nipples and requiring great care and delicacy to make stand erect. Their eyes were vague orbs of shimmering green in his visor's reveal, but pupils could be ascertained within those iridescent pools, shaking and moving and darting and _hungry._

"Not looking for a fight," Tarkus told them; his words muffled and distorted from the grating of his helmet's breather. "Looking for 'Sun Worshippers'."

Their replies came ubiquitously whispering upon the swirl of the winds:

"_Big sword for no fight."_

_"Big armor."_

_"Big _man_."_

_"Not in his jurisdiction."_

_"No law out here. No rule."_

_"Big man think he in the forest."_

_"Big man wrong."_

_"Big man in the _jungle._"_

Snickering laughter, then-

-they came. A spindly hunter launched himself from the low-hanging branch of a tree on Tarkus' right flank. The man twirled in the air, blaring with rapturous, inane, cackling, his hands stretched out before him to shape his body into a living arrow, the tip of which housed twin daggers, sharpened points spiraling down on Tarkus like a drill bit. Tarkus' sword was too big and cumbersome to get up in time, but the curved plating on his elbow wasn't. He jabbed it forward and met the man's attack. The forest rang with the sound of the deflected daggers. The hunter shook his head till foam and spittle flung loose from his lips and then he was recollecting himself for another leap. Tarkus ended it preemptively by driving the man down into the soil with his boot.

Two more hunters rustled in the leaves at Tarkus' backside. He spun back to see them scrambling forth in the night on all fours like hounds raised and rallied from Izalith itself; eyes lolling about madly in their sockets; tattered headbands wavering behind them like flags of victory flapping in the thrill of the charge. They snarled, leapt, hoisted daggers over their heads, and for a moment were silhouetted against the moonlit canopy of treetops, and resembled falling leaves themselves.

Then Tarkus slung his greatsword around in a horizontal sweep and the broad-side took one in the ribs, filled the forest with the cracking and bursting of bone, and burrowed him sideways with such momentum, his twin attacker's arm was shattered on impact, and the two went sailing back into the shadows they crawled from.

More hunters, blood heated at the sights and sounds of combat now, came screeching and scrambling out of the darkness for him. One leaped for the treetops, vanished, and appeared a moment later howling like a loon, fixing to drive his daggers into Tarkus' visor and tunnel out his eyes. Tarkus swatted the attack aside with the hilt of his sword, and when the man's momentum carried him near, threw his head forth against the hunter's own. The man's plummeting skull met the forward thrust of ebony plating from Tarkus' brow, crunched, and the hunter fell to his feet, either dead or close enough.

_So it is still that easy._

Two more hunters closed in on his flanks. Tarkus angled his sword out longways and snapped his hips, pivoting himself in a semi-circle on his heel. The tip sliced the first's belly and sent the attacker back in retreat wailing in agony, and the second had scrambled back out of the sword's warpath by the time it came slicing through his way.

A trumpet's shrill call, blaring in the night: _Awooooooooooooooooooooo._

The hunter's responded immediately. Their stances shifted subtly to defense instead of offense, and their shoulders hunched up high while their knees buckled down low; daggers held balefully before them, slicing at the air. They hissed and seethed with contempt as they slowly fell back on their heels. Tarkus swept his head around the scene and counted four wounded bodies laying in the swash of green paint his visor provided. The rest were abandoning them without, apparently, any remorse.

The man he'd stomped into the dirt clawed himself out of the clearing with two handfuls of vines. The two with cracked ribs and a shattered arm helped each other up and scurried off like frightened rats. The man he'd headbutted stirred, tried to stand, lasted all of three seconds on wobbly legs, and collapsed again.

Tarkus stepped beside the fallen hunter and peered down at him. "'Sun Worshippers'."

The hunter's eyes lifted to him, widened to saucers. "_Fuck you._"

Tarkus laid his boot on the man's hand and applied just enough pressure to pin it in place. It reminded him of the bottle he'd stepped on and shattered in the streets of Anor Londo. "Where can I find them?"

"_Piss off you big ugly fucker!_" The man's words came pouring from his mouth without pause or inflection; only a stream of pure contempt.

Tarkus shifted his weight a bit more on the man's boot-trapped hand.

The hunter wailed.

"Where?"

"_FUCKYOUIDONTKNOW!_"

More weight; more pressure; more crunching of the delicate web of bones that made up a human hand.

More screaming.

"_ISWEARIDON'TKNOW! PLEASESTOP!_"

A man who screamed like the hunter was was either telling the truth or a very well-disciplined liar. Tarkus didn't particularly enjoy being violent, though, and so he assumed the former and eased off some of the pressure. "Does Shiva?"

"_Shiva knows everything! Shiva is a great man! If you fight Shiva - you die, Big Bastard! You DIE! DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE!_"

Tarkus flicked the toe of his boot across the hunter's temple and the man fell limp and unconscious to the forest bedding of pine needles and twigs and dirt; Tarkus didn't require any further information from him.

Now all he had to do was follow the sound of the trumpet, find Shiva, and extract the necessary information. Then he was going to kill the 'Sun Worshippers'. Then he was going home… and then Sarah.

Deeper into the forest he pressed; further into darkness he went.


	4. Chapter 4

Incandescence leaked between the trees, its maternal flames lashing and licking at the night beyond in red and orange tendrils and casting oblong strips of quivering shadows racing to his feet. Tarkus could feel the heat emanating beyond the bars of bark standing guard between him and the fiery scene beyond, and as he moved closer, mindful of his steps to maintain some semblance of stealth, he saw mad silhouettes dancing and howling and cheering and passing across the lines of trees, invigorated by the flames. Closer, he could hear muttered incantations on their lusty breath. Closer still, he could smell their sweat. Closer again and he was pressed up against the clearing's outer rim; peering into the bark-framed window of another world.

The Forest Hunters came into focus as they danced around a central fire, raging furiously in the night on a stack of what looked like wooden sticks. These hunters were different from the ones Tarkus had briefly come entangled with near the forest's entrance. They were utterly naked, save for bone necklaces dangling around their throats, and copious amounts of dark paint splattered across their bare flesh in images of beasts and men and Gods alike, feasting on one another's hearts and drinking of their blood. Their hair was long and unkempt and slicked up over their heads with heavy greases that molded it into gnarled, tortuous, shapes. Their dirty hands did not clutch at dagger hilts like their scouting brethren, but at sharpened rocks and torches. As they went leaping from bare foot to bare foot in a perpetual and unbroken circle, the central fire sent their shadows leaping onto the trees that stood watch over the scene in silent indifference. As the hunters danced, so did their shadows.

And in the center, bound in ropes six-feet high upon a stake wedged down into the bonfire's heart, a woman in the matching ensemble attire of a faded grey and crimson hat, cloak, gloves, and skirt was on the verge of being swallowed by the flames at her booted feet. If this notion perturbed her, it did not show: she sat in her prison of ropes with the complacent posture of one who might be waiting for the rain to stop falling before moving on. Her chin was lowered to her chest, the sharp jut of her witch's hat layering down to perfectly wedge between her cloak's high-rimmed collar and keeping her face hidden in shadow.

Tarkus had been accused of being a bit obtuse more than once in his life, and, for the most part: his accusers were right. So it took him awhile of staring at the hunter's prisoner staked up on her pole before coming to the realization that they were intending to burn her alive. That didn't sit well with Tarkus, as he had no interest in seeing a person, let alone a woman, burned alive, and so he activated his helmet to leap around his head, dimmed down the luminescence of the visor, and readied his greatsword.

The Forest Hunters went on dancing their primitive dance, stabbing contemptuously at their air between the prisoner and themselves with their sharpened rocks and tossing the occasional torch down to feed the flames that would consume her life. They sniggered and whispered hushed secrets to one another, but the insane dancing seemed somehow vital to sustain, and so these snares in the ritual were brief and fleeting before it went on again.

Tarkus shouldered between the outer rim of trees to stand amongst the hunters. A few moments passed. Somehow, not one of them noticed the six-foot-ten tower of black armor that had sprouted from the earth beneath the trees to watch alongside them. Even the staked prisoner's head remained down and uninterested. Tarkus was uncertain of how to handle the situation before him. He watched the dance a while longer before his eyes found the bonfire flames creeping—ever creeping—closer and closer to the prisoner's feet and legs. He stepped to the constantly-shifting dance circle and laid his sword out flat to block the advance of a dancer.

The man turned glossy, unfocused, eyes on him and threw up his hands indignantly. "Whassamadda?"

Tarkus didn't understand the man's slurred speech, so replied simply with: "You're going to burn her."

The nude dancer, apparently, was just as obtuse as Tarkus, for he only stared his blank stare for a moment before languidly pivoting his head around to the prisoner. "Her?"

"Yeah."

"Yessumweissss," the dancer hissed as a delighted smile curled his lips back from his teeth. "Burnbabyburn."

"Why?"

"_WHY_!?"

"Why are you going to burn her?"

The man scratched at his exposed crotch and, for a moment, looked utterly perplexed by the question. Then the brightness of an idea lit his face, and he bit his bottom lip and pointed up into Tarkus' visor. "_FUCK YOU!_" A guttural growl erupted from his throat and he threw himself forward.

He landed with his arms and legs wrapped around the hard casing of Tarkus' armor, squeezed himself tightly to his chest, and began throwing his war-painted face repeatedly into the visor in, what Tarkus assumed, was an attempt to smash through the thing. But Tarkus' visor was not smash-throughable, and so after three, somewhat-annoying, attempts, the man had only succeeded in bloodying his own brow. When he was finished, Tarkus casually took hold of the back of his neck and pinched at the nerve clusters; an old Berenike trick. Bliss came upon the hunter's face before he fell unconscious and Tarkus watched as he crashed limply to the forest floor at his feet.

Surprised shouting from a dance-troop jarred out of their dancing hypnosis:

"_Hey!_"

"_Whassafuck!?"_

_"GIANT!_"

_"Kill!_"

"_Burn!_"

"_GIANT!_"

Tarkus ascertained from this that he was a giant who was going to either be killed or burned, and so he readied his sword and swept his eyes beneath his visor across their numbers.

By then, the witch-on-a-stake had finally lifted the brim of her hat enough for him to glimpse sandy-brown locks of hair and a pointed chin but little else under the veil of the hat's shadow. For the first time, she squirmed a bit restlessly in her many ropes.

"_GIANTFUCK!_" A man wailed, leaping a burning log of fallen wood at the bonfire's rim to charge the gap between them; sharpened rock held up over his head; face sneering and snarling and feral. "_GIANTFUCK_!_"_

"Tarkus," Tarkus corrected him. "Looking for 'Sun Worshippers'. Shiva."

If the charging man heard, he certainly did not care. His charge, if anything, grew more vehement as he closed the gap. His teeth began chomping against each other, as if his bloodlust had reached his belly, and he was helpless but to think of the ensuing violence as a tangible treat.

Tarkus let him get close before wrenching back his arm and swatting the attacker off course with the broadside of his sword. The man howled in either agony or bliss and stumbled off to Tarkus' right, where his mad charge met an abrupt and painful end against the bark of a tree. The hunter collapsed to the bed of pine needles and dirt and 'fell asleep' beside his fallen brethren at once.

Strained declarations of apprehension:

"_MERIDEW! Hurthim!_"

"_Clobberedhimgood!_"

"_Wantstohurtus!_"

"_Clobberusgood!_"

"_Runnow!?_"

"_Shivawillfixgiant!_"

"_SHIVA!_"

"_SHIVA! SHIVA! SHIVA!_"

And just like that: their dancing, their prisoner, their bonfire, their forest clearing, all of it forgotten under the unified mantra of "_Shiva!_". The hunters collected their naked selves and scrambled out to disappear beyond the dark lines of the circle of trees; snarling and dropping to all fours and holding dear to their dangling privates.

Tarkus watched them go, trying to focus on the general line of their direction so he could follow it back to Shiva. When he was satisfied with his findings, he turned his visor on the staked woman. She was all but writhing against her ropes then; the reaching fingertips of flame scraping at the soles of her black boots and singeing the hem of her skirt. Tarkus walked up before the flames, their immense heat beating against his armor, and angled his head back to meet the witch's.

Hovering above the lashing flames, her face was revealed in its incandescence. It was pretty: sharp featured and drawn in intelligent lines between dangling strands of sandy-brown hair. Her eyes narrowed onto his; twin pools of dark brown, pupils alight with the flames below seeking to shut them forever. Her thin lips pulled away from a row of clean, white, teeth and she growled: "_Cut me free!_"

Tarkus looked to the fire, to her boots, to her eyes again. There was still time. He needed to use it. "Why were they burning you?"

Her eyes narrowed further, incredulous and indignant. "_I said cut me free! My dress is going to catch fire! Cut me free _now_!"_

Her dress _was_ going to catch fire, but not yet. "'Sun Worshipper'?"

Her incredulity gave way to a blank, nonplussed, stare. "…_are you deaf!?_"

"Need to find them. Need to catch them. Need to stop them. Need information," he told her, and after a moment's reflection, added," Not deaf."

The woman barred her teeth and glared down at him, but Tarkus only held her look and waited. Below, the flames rose a bit higher on the stake, reaching up on high-tide now to take hold of her ankles. The anger on the woman's face gave way to consternation as she flicked her eyes down to the flames. She swallowed, nodded, said: "_Alright! I'll tell you anything you want to know you giant bastard, just CUT ME DOWN NOW!_"

Tarkus did. With one clean motion he hacked into the stake just below the soles of her boots. A thunderous _crack _screamed into the night and then the whole thing was lurching sideways like a star falling from the heavens above. The woman's face contorted with fear, but then Tarkus shuffled sideways, caught the brunt of the falling stake on the heavy plating of his shoulder mantle, and dragged it free from the reaching hands of flames that released its base without resistance. He dragged her now-mobile prison far away enough from the flames to feel comfortable setting her down. When he did, he saw little embers still chewing at the hem of her skirt, and was quick to snuff them between forefinger and thumb.

"You insane bastard," the woman snarled, writhing furiously again against the stake now that the immediate danger had passed.

"Name?" He asked.

"Untie me!"

"Not a name."

"Untie me, _now!_"

"Still not a name."

"_Beatrice, _you bastard! Beatrice! Now you-"

"'Sun Worshippers', Beatrice," he interjected. "Need to find them."

Her eyes narrowed angrily onto his own as she silently fumed a moment before asking, "Why, in the name of Lordran, are you looking for the 'Sun Worshippers'?"

Tarkus' answer was immediate and honest: "So I can go home."


	5. Chapter 5

Tarkus' initial impressions of Beatrice were the following: she was smart; she was some sort of sorceress; and she was possibly mildly insane.

He watched her stomp around the bonfire, the sharp heels of her boots burrowing fresh tunnels into the soft forest dirt, her gloved hands clenching and unclenching restlessly; as if she were searching for something to take hold of that perpetually eluded her grasp. Her lips were thin and shadowed beneath the brim of her witch's hat, and Tarkus watched them move with rapt curiosity. She was muttering things to herself, whispered incantations not unlike those the forest hunters spoke, and kept chewing at the corner of her bottom lip, shaking her head, and pacing around the fire again. She halted abruptly, stared into the dark line of trees that made up the clearing's caged wall, laughed, and went on muttering and pacing and leaving trails of shallow holes in her path's wake.

Tarkus had found a half-burnt haunch of rabbit laying discarded and forlorn at the bonfire's rim. He was hungry, so he sent his helm back into his breastplate and ate. It was good, but not great. It reminded him of his wife's cooking, which had also been good but not great, but which he had loved very, very, much all the same. He missed it.

Beatrice planted one of her poky heels in the dirt, snapped her hips so that her ash-grey cloak whipped around her hips in a pretty way that made Tarkus think of a flower in bloom, and marched determinedly up to him.

He chewed his haunch and watched her come.

A slender finger, half-wrapped in a black glove, hoisted up between her and him and angled down at his face. "Why didn't you kill them!?"

Tarkus shrugged. "Not looking to kill anyone I don't have to."

Her eyes narrowed and the lines of her face ran taught as smart people's were wont to do from time-to-time. The look made Tarkus uncomfortable. He didn't think himself stupid, exactly, but he knew his mind worked a little slower than most, so when smart people started in on long, sprawling, monologues, he often felt a bit lost by the end.

"Those filthy, primitive, barbarians don't deserve anyone's sympathies. You saw how crass and vulgar their 'dancing' was, surely? Clearly, you recognized their intent to burn me. You afforded mercy to the unmerciful, and now they'll only go on clinging to their vapid existence until they find something _new _to burn or smash to bits. Congratulations." Her voice was sharp and carried the inflections and pronunciations of a deft tongue commanded by an educated mind. She folded her arms across her chest. "You have to kill them."

Tarkus took a bite of his haunch. It was a good way to buy himself time to mull over her words. Smart people were always expecting you to fill the silent lulls in conversation the moment they arose, and he didn't understand why. If you wanted to have true conversation, shouldn't you consider your partners words?

"Hello?"

Tarkus chewed.

Her brown eyes bore into his. "You're quite the simpleton, aren't you?"

Tarkus swallowed. "I don't think so."

"Those creatures you let go must be eradicated."

"Why were they burning you?"

Some of the sharpness left her expression, but only briefly; anger tightened it back up again fast. "Because they're barbarians."

"That's the only reason?"

"A barbarian only _needs_ one reason to engage in wanton acts of cruelty. It is their nature."

Tarkus held her smoldering eyes. "I need to find the 'Sun Worshippers'. Nothing more. Nothing less."

She sneered. "You're a Berenike."

"Why do you think that?"

"You're wearing their armor, aren't you?" She flicked her eyes over his shoulder, swept the trees, returned them to him. "I was under the assumption that you boys traveled in groups."

"Special assignment."

"They send _one _man down here among the filth and crime and utter decadence to take on these 'Sun Worshippers' by _himself_?" She paused a moment, surveying him head-to-toe. "They must have quite the confidence in your abilities."

"Suppose they do." He looked to his gauntlet. It was the same gauntlet he'd worn before he _left _the Berenikes. Before he lost… everything. He curled it to a fist and watched the flexible bits around his knuckles curve to meet the contours of his hand; a hand that was older beneath an exoskeleton of armor that hadn't aged a day. There was something interesting in that juxtaposition, but Tarkus didn't quite know what. _You're drifting again. _He returned his eyes to Beatrice. "Berenikes can't risk sending a squadron down here, anyway. They know how restless things have gotten. They don't want a war."

"So they send you: a lone, giant-of-a-man, with an equally giant sword to slay and slaughter their foes and fix all their little problems?" A haughty smirk played at the corner of her thin lips. "And you agreed?"

"Yes."

She looked him over again, as if her first examination had produced false results and required a more fastidious scrutinization. "You must be one courageous man to take on such daunting endeavors. Why?"

"Why?"

"Why agree?"

_Sarah. _"My reasons are my own."

Beatrice chewed her bottom lip. She snapped her hips again, sending her cloak dusting against his cheek as she sauntered back up to the bonfire. Over her shoulder, Tarkus could hear her muttering to herself again. She stood like that awhile, a thin, billowing, silhouette in the wind, superimposed atop the fire's incandescence. When she turned back towards him, their was a sharpness in her eyes again that stirred that inner well of trepidation in the slower corners of Tarkus' mind. She marched up to him and extended her open hand into the gap. "What's your name?"

"Tarkus."

"Well, Tarkus, do you believe in fate?"

Tarkus considered it.

"Well, it doesn't matter I suppose," Beatrice plowed on impatiently. "Certainly you believe in mutual partnerships to further said-partners' goals, no? Of course you do. Now, listen to me, Tarkus: our interests are one in the same. Your 'Sun Worshipper' problem and my barbarian one lie down the same, filthy, road. It is a road that is shrouded in deceits and subterfuge and scum, but it _is _the road before us, nonetheless."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about an Inquisition." She looked ready to go on speaking, but halted abruptly and fixed him with a patronizing look. "Do you know what that word means?"

"I know." He did… in a way.

"Good. Well, the Eastern merchant and connoisseur of blades, Shiva, is heading one such 'Inquisition' against sorcerers and sorceresses like myself. Against, in fact, _all _magic users in Lordran. He seeks to uproot and eradicate them for their 'heresy'."

"Heresy? What are they heretics _against_?"

"Their new 'God'," Beatrice explained, leaning a bit closer to him. "They call it the 'Sun'."

Tarkus mulled her revelation over. "You're saying Shiva and his Forest Hunters are also 'Sun Worshippers'?"

"Anyone who abuses the drug worships at its feet. Therein lies the true power of the drug. It is so potent, so cheap, so easily obtainable, the whole of Lordran's underworld is falling under its spell." She sneered. "And Shiva and his boys know their is wisdom and wonder in the arcane ways of us mages that could combat it. Now he seeks to oppress our potential liberation, and snuff our intellect beneath his barbaric horde's brutality."

"Is that why they were really burning you?"

"Yes."

"You lied to me."

"Only a caution."

"From?"

"From an increasingly hostile world that looks upon us mages as the enemy," Beatrice explained, "when the _true _enemy is this 'Sun' and its hollow-brained, zealous, followers."

Tarkus eyed her shrewdly.

The woman's eyes rolled beneath the brim of her witch's hat. "Look there," she said, pointing back to the bonfire. "Do you know what is fueling those flames?"

"Wood."

"_Catalysts_," she corrected. "They're burning catalysts. You seem like a descent enough man. Surely you don't support something as detestable and insidious as an 'Inquisition', do you?"

"No."

She hoisted her extended hand a bit higher so it breached the line of his eyes. She wiggled her fingers. "So are we partners for now or not? I help you find and… _remove _these 'Sun Worshippers', and in return, I get a seven-foot-tall wrecking ball to help stave off this terrible and unjust eradication of my kind."

"How do you help me?"

"Get me a catalyst, and I'll show you what sort of 'help' I can provide." Her voice was filled with the vigor and vibrance of one who obtained a great amount of confidence in their abilities.

"Catalyst… back in town…. not far from here, I suppose."

Her brow lifted; her lips curved to a grin; her fingers went on wiggling.

With some hesitation, Tarkus shook, and his first real 'partnership' began after a six-year-stint of solitude. He stared at the smirking woman hovering above him. There was a somewhat-mad twinkle in her eye, and Tarkus could only hope that madness would aid his mission instead of hindering it.

He rose to his feet, and the two of them headed back towards the dull glow beyond the trees that was Anor Londo's guiding beacon.


End file.
